One of the main questions raised by the ongoing trade negotiations between the United States and five countries of Central America—Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua—is why these very small economies have decided to negotiate a free trade agreement (the Central American Free Trade Agreement, known as CAFTA) with the biggest and most […]

Notes1 Cuba’s economic transformation in the 1990s cannot be considered the solution to the formidable challenge of substantially modifying the current productive structure of the economy in order to achieve development. Despite the changes, the reconstruction of the Cuban economy is an incipient process with a high level of indeterminacy. To put it simply, it […]

For more than 40 years, longer than many people can remember, the U.S. and Cuban governments have not had diplomatic and trade relationships (for a chronology of the U.S. embargo see Kaufman Purcell and Rothkopf, 2000, Appendix A). During most of that time this anomalous state of affairs did not attract much controversy, for it […]

Notes1 The 2000 U.S. Population Census, conducted between January and September 2000, was, according to the U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce, “the largest peacetime effort in the history of the United States” (U.S. Census Bureau 2001). The first bits of data – overall estimates of the resident population on April 1, 2000 […]

Through writing, public advocacy, and other personal and professional endeavors, I have demonstrated my firm belief that greater engagement with Cuba would advance America’s national interest and at long last bring economic and democratic reform to the island. As former executive director of the Cuba Policy Foundation (CPF), I had the fortunate experience of participating […]